Masters Theses

Author

Aleksei Rakov

Abstract

"A traveling-wave technique developed a few years ago in the Missouri S&T EMC Laboratory has been employed until now for characterization of PCB materials over a broad frequency range up to 30 GHz. This technique includes measuring S-parameters of the specially designed PCB test vehicles. An extension of the frequency range of printed circuit board laminate dielectric and copper foil characterization is an important problem. In this work, a new PCB test vehicle design for operating up to 50 GHz has been proposed. As the frequency range of measurements increases, the analysis of errors and uncertainties in measuring dielectric properties becomes increasingly important. Formulas for quantification of two major groups of errors, repeatability (manufacturing variability) and reproducibility (systematic) errors, in extracting dielectric constant (DK) and dissipation factor (DK) have been derived, and computations for a number of cases are presented. Conductor (copper foil) surface roughness of PCB interconnects is an important factor, which affects accuracy of DK and DF measurements. This work describes a new algorithm for semi-automatic characterization of copper foil profiles on optical or scanning electron microscopy (SEM) pictures of signal traces. The collected statistics of numerous copper foil roughness profiles allows for introducing a new metric for roughness characterization of PCB interconnects. This is an important step to refining the measured DK and DF parameters from roughness contributions. The collected foil profile data and its analysis allow for developing "design curves", which could be used by SI engineers and electronics developers in their designs"--Abstract, page iii.

Advisor(s)

Koledintseva, Marina

Committee Member(s)

Drewniak, James L.
Fan, Jun, 1971-

Department(s)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Degree Name

M.S. in Electrical Engineering

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Fall 2013

Pagination

xi, 136 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 57-62).

Rights

© 2013 Aleksei Rakov, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Subject Headings

Printed circuits -- Design
Dielectric devices
Signal integrity (Electronics)

Thesis Number

T 10414

Electronic OCLC #

870651209

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